http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15646812

Maybe central heating and other “home comforts” are equally to blame kids staying in over the winter? When there was no central heating, you had to move around to keep warm. Kids today, eh?

There’s always some slightly bats argument to keeping the clocks at CET.

So it's the clock changing, and not the new Modern Warfare game?
Riiiiggghht.

Putting the clocks wrong isn't going to change the amount of daylight. It'll just mean being driven to school in the dark.

Perhaps kids could get up 10 minutes earlier in the morning and walk instead. They're far less likely to be abducted by a paedophile than they are run over by a 4x4 doing the school run. Fewer cars on the roads would make life safer for everyone, as well as reducing childhood obesity.

Both of those things are more likely to happen at their homes, statistically speaking.

Why not just change school hours to a more continental setup. Start early, finish early, grades improve and kids get more exercise to boot.

What, like those darned Fenchies? Don't be daft - the American way is always the forward way!

I actually have no idea what the American school day is like, but I doubt they have half days mid-week and two hour lunch breaks.

The one thing I'd copy from the American school system is the buses. Then we wouldn't get hordes of hapless feckers driving ludicrous vehicles designed for crossing the Kalihari just to drop little Jemima off less than 5 yards from her classroom.

Jon

We have buses - or at least my local school does. They're just not the same colour.

We didn't have video games, we used to play outside with our friends, when the weather was fine, even if it was getting dark.

When it was too dark or wet, we'd play in the house, running round etc.

That is what has changed, when kids play in the house, the sit on the sofa and play video games...

70's child here did but then we'd play in the woods anyway.

That's one of the main issues I think, many kids don't have any green spaces to go and play on. No wonder they either don't go out or just get bored to death having to hang around on streets.

Most of the places my friends used to play in have now been built on...

I lived on a busy road with an over protective mother, I didn't go out to play

But I wasn't a podgy kid, that all started when I hit my teens. Regardless of the little exercise I got (P.E., lunch time run-rounds, walking to a from school, a family walk/play in the woods most Sundays), I didn't eat crap until I decided that I could go and get my own snacks, which was pretty much the same time as I started putting on weight

Let me see if I've got this correct...

All the parents in the realm who, afeared of busy roads and malignant phantoms, currently use the television to corral their children would spontaneously set loose their progeny into the winter world if only we had BST all year round? This despite those same parents not allowing their offspring free rein even in the summer?

Utter Ball Locks.

Indeed. There are a few facts that seems to be forgotten by the current generation of parents.

1 - Weird paedos have always been around. They are not a new invention of a broken society.

2 - A child is more likely to be abused by someone they know - generally a relative. At times, someone they trust (see Catholic Church for examples of other figures of trust).

3 - Kids need to go out and get dirty, bruised, injured through play. I cannot tell you how many times I came home with cuts, bruises and grazes from playing with friends on waste ground on our push bikes. Far from being abnormal behaviour, this is what we all did. I would not be surprised if most of my friends from school ended up in the same place at weekends.

These days, it’s rare to see that kind of gathering. Despite living on an estate where there are kids, I don’t see as many kids playing on the green outside than there was when we first moved here. Yes, I think kids are being corralled by computers and over cautious parents, and its that doing them the harm, not GMT/BST changes.

I don’t know how we can shake off this habit and say to parents - “look, your kids will be fine’ and get them to trust that statement.

That and todays culture seems to think that more than a few kids in a group and something dodgy is going on...